The Texas-headquartered company plans to grow its Galway workforce from 180 to 300 over the next three years.
HID Global, a US identification company with operations in Galway, has said it is on track to open a new centre of excellence in the city later this year. Having taken on 80 new staff since 2019, it plans to grow its Irish cohort to 300 by the end of 2023.
The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and established a base in Tully, Co Galway, in 2006. It currently employs 180 people in Ireland and more than 4,000 people around the world, with teams in Australia, Argentina, Canada, Japan, Thailand, the UK and more.
HID Global develops identity technologies such as access control tools, ID cards and more. It developed the technology behind Ireland’s passport card programme, which allows people travelling around Europe to use an electronic passport card instead of the traditional booklet.
The company’s senior vice-president and head of secure issuance and citizen ID solutions, Craig Sandness, said the new Galway base will be a “state-of-the-art facility” and will serve as a “major hub for the production of access and identification-related applications”, such as electronic passports and access cards, which represent large and growing segments of HID’s business.
“Our new facility in Galway underscores HID Global’s commitment to steadily expand our operations, R&D, supply chain, customer service, IT, finance and other business functions to support a growing customer base across EMEA,” Sandness added.
The company will be looking for production operators, printers, engineers and other technical workers at the new centre, as well as staff across customer support, finance, IT and supply chain.
Vice-president and site lead at HID Global Ireland, Trevor Fox, said: “Galway has been an excellent foundation for us to build from and the continuing investment from HID to underpin our capability and growth plan can be seen as a huge boost of confidence in the area and the people behind the success.
“Our employees have been outstanding at adapting throughout the pandemic and this adaptability and resilience allowed us to continue business as usual and drive on with this programme of investment. We are very excited to move to this new centre of excellence from 2022.”
Learn more about careers at HID Global here.
